US Indymedia Centers

On Wednesday, October 13th, Indymedia's seized hardware was mysteriously returned in the same way it disappeared -- without any information provided as to who took it or why, and on whose orders. An employee at Rackspace, the U.S.-based web hosting company that handed over Indymedia's disks to the U.S. government on 7 October, emailed an Indymedia volunteer to say that the disks were returned and that "the court order is being complied with... I will pass along any more information that becomes available and that I am allowed to."

Evidence is beginning to mount that the authorities of at least four countries (Switzerland, Italy, U.K. and U.S.A.) are involved in last week's seizure of two of Indymedia's servers that brought down more than 20 of the Indymedia network's web sites and several internet radio streams. Indymedia has yet to receive any official statement or information about what the order entailed or why it was issued.

An FBI spokesperson, Joe Parris, confirmed to Agence France-Presse that the FBI issued a subpoena to the provider who hosted the Indymedia servers in the U.K., but that it was "on behalf of a third country." (1) Daniel Zapelli, senior federal prosecutor for Geneva (Switzerland), confirmed that he has opened a criminal investigation into Indymedia coverage of the 2003 G8 Summit in Evian. (2) Zapelli will provide details of that investigation at a press conference on Tuesday.

US authorities issued a federal order to Rackspace's office in the US ordering them to provide Indymedia's hardware located in London to the requesting agency. Rackspace is one of Indymedia's web hosting providers with offices in the US and London. Rackspace complied, without first notifying Indymedia, and turned over Indymedia's server in the UK. This affects some 20+ Indymedia sites worldwide including Western Massachusetts.

It was Foucault who dismissed the notion that we can fight power as outsiders because absolutely everything in society is permeated with power. To think that one is outside the grip of power is at best naïve. Power can be conquered, often violently, but it best serves a society when deconstructed and transformed.

On Tuesday, September 28, I went to a Pearl Jam concert in that hideous refuge of corporate advertisement that is the Fleet Center. I hate the Fleet, not only because it represents corporate supremacy over communal space, but also because, honestly, the acoustics are just terrible.

Boston’s Independent Media Center is contemplating conquering the fashion world with our very own line of upper-torso wear. Being an open source media center, we felt that the best thing to do is give everyone a chance to come up with the winning design(s). After all, we are you, you are us and so on… The winner(s) will receive a year long subscription to the bi-weekly Boston Independent newspaper (that will debut in the next month or so) and two free T-shirts with their own winning design printed on them! Not to mention the satisfaction of promoting the future of Boston’s very own independent media source, working hard to bring you the truth and give you the tools to tell it.

During the weekend of September 10th-12th, hundreds of community radio organizers from New England, and all over the world, will gather together to bring a brand new community radio station to the air, as the Prometheus Radio Project partners with Portsmouth Community Radio for its sixth Radio Barnraising!

As volunteer technicians build everything from the studio to the tower, producers, engineers, and organizers from all over the United States and Canada will teach dozens of workshops on everything from how to record and edit a news show, to how to navigate the intricacies of FCC regulations. Earlier radio barnraisings have been with civil rights groups, farmworkers organizations, environmental groups, Native American tribes, and community groups.

A multi-agency task force shut down a NYC Indymedia video team benefit late Saturday night, sparking complaints that the action was politically motivated. "I don't think every single department showing up here was a coincidence," said Brandon Jourdan, a video team organizer. "But maybe it was or maybe it was not. People will have to decide for themselves." || NYC IMC Video Team

The scandal is unfolding in gigantic proportions... and we can hardly keep up with the developments. Responding to a publicity and solidarity campaign by Indymedia, the Government of the Republic of Cyprus has been forced to admit that they were acting under orders from the US Government to carry out an intelligence investigation of Cyprus Indymedia and of one of its founding members, Petros Evdokas, in order to assess whether he "constitutes a threat to US interests." Police had interrogated the family of Petros Evdokas a few weeks ago and, during the affair, inadvertently blurted out that the source of this investigation was a directive by the CIA. After a series of denials and cover-ups (chronicled below) the Police Headquarters issued an official statement on Friday admitting to everything that Indymedia had accused them of, namely that directives of the CIA and the US Embassy have priority over their own mission which, believe it or not, is to protect the tiny and independent Republic from foreign intervention. This campaigns to intimidate IndyMedia is part of a global trend, including the nation- wide "pre- emptive" raids and interrogations by the FBI of radicals in Boston and across the US in order to thwart preparations to protest at the two Republocrat party conventions.